I usually have a lot of blog ideas when I travel. A lot of time is spent waiting, practically wasted, the mind wanders. I rarely make anything of it, it's not practical, but it does come to me more intensely than at any other time. Today, though, I didn't have to look far.

I arrive at Schiphol ridiculously early, two and a half hours before my flight. I guess I don't like to be late, but this was way far ahead of time compared to the margin I usually allow myself. I check in and line up for the now customary security screening. I don't care for this, I always have to take off my belt cause it sets off the buzzer. I put my bag down, it goes through the little car wash and I walk through the detector. Nothing. I see the guy in front of me being body searched. I've never been body searched before, but hey if this is what they have to do, what do I care. The guy seemed to enjoy it, took his sweet time, very thorough. I don't really care, but I imagine some people might have a bit of a problem with someone giving them a good head-to-toe rub down. Then I see the people behind me are not being searched, wtf? As long as it's the same for everyone, I don't very much care, but why did they single me out? At least 10 people passed through behind me with no searching. Well whatever, I wait for my luggage to come through, they're taking ages with it. Finally the lady holds up my bag, "whose is this?" It's mine. "Nederlands or English?" English. Then she mumbles something I don't understand. I stand there waiting, she's busy screening other bags. Wtf? After a while, a guy grabs my bag, walks up to me. "Could you open the bag please?" "You have a laptop in there?" "Yes, I do." "Can you take it out?" "Yes, I can." How courteous. I take out my laptop case. "Do you have scissors in there?" "No." I imagine at this point that as my bag came through, the lady who's screening them got a blinking red dialog box on her screen "scissors, 4 minutes to armageddon". I shouldn't have said it, but "actually I may have scissors elsewhere". I take out my pencil case, there are the scissors. The guy tells me I have to either check them in (bit too late for that, wise guy) or leave them. So they stole my scissors. Interestingly, the guy right in front of me also had scissors as part of a first aid kit and they let *him* take them on the plane. So I have to take out my laptop, they have to scan it again by itself. Apparently their scanner is so shitty they make people do this all the time now, yet another way to annoy us. So I get all my stuff scanned again, took about 20 minutes in all (not that I was in a rush, mind), finally it's all done.

All in all, I didn't really mind it, I had plenty of time and I was in a good mood. But then in Oslo they made take out my laptop *again* to scan separately (for some reason they can't reroute the luggage to domestic flights, you have to collect it and then check it in again *sigh*) and it got old fast. Still, I've never been given the detail treatment before and I don't know what set it off this time. I am certifiably Dutch and I'm white, I thought they only stopped Arab men with long beards? :confused:

So every language group has a certain type of language errors they are prone to make. Dutch people generally speak terrific English (it's not a myth, it's true), but even here they have a way of making certain mistakes over and over and over. Yeah, I'm too lazy to keep notes and make a list of it, but most striking is the way they misuse make. "make the test", "make the exam", "make the exercises", it's "take the test", "take the exam", "do the exercises". No other error is as widespread as this one, it's like they never realize it.

It seems like a lifetime ago now, but back before I lived in Norway, I would crack up upon hearing stories from Erik about what life in Holland could be like at times. It all sounded too nutty to be true. Well, guess who's laughing now, that's right, Erik. One time he told me he took out the garbage "on the wrong day" [wtf??], cause he was headed out of the city, the garbage men "caught" him, they literally went through his garbage and found a piece of paper with his name on it [WTF???] and fined him for the "infraction" [please stop, I can't take anymore]. bwahahaha. Oh dear, couldn't hold it in. No, but seriously, whaaat? Dude, where is my car?

Ok, so I move into this historical monument (I kid you not) in the very center of Utrecht that the university painstakingly secured for me. The house is a ruin, it's literally falling apart. There are rumors about it being demolished once the last tenant moves out of it. In fact, there are rumors that it was supposed to be demolished years ago already. I won't dwell on the house, it deserves a photo album of its own. But rest assured it utterly sucks and looks, as one visitor called it, like "a hell hole". Anywho, I live with 4 other internationals here. That's right, big surprise they ripped off the international students and put them in probably the crappiest premises in the whole of Utrecht, charging us a steady fee. But where was I, oh yes, garbage, the recurring theme of this entry.

So the way they organize the garbage collection here (please hold your outburst of laughter till the end of this paragraph) is that they put out garbage containers. But, you won't find them just any time at all. No, they only appear on TUESDAYS and FRIDAYS. So if you have some garbage you really want to get rid of, you have to wait up to 3 days. But pay attention, because on WEDNESDAYS they put out the *paper* container. Although people throw a lot of crap in there, *technically* it's only for paper. Got it?

Time for a story. Picture a Tuesday night. In fact, a CL night. Jake and I are in the kitchen watching the game (can't remember which one). Our garbage is full, Jake ties up the garbage bag, heads out to toss it in the dumpster. Hang on, there is no garbage container outside, just the paper one. The garbage service must have screwed up the schedule. He brings the bag back inside, it will have to wait until Friday. The next morning, at 8.30, Melissa is headed to school. She grabs the garbage on her way out. Seeing that the dumpster is full, she leaves the bag outside by the staircase and goes to school. 11am that morning, I hear the doorbell ring. I reluctantly open the door to find two funny looking guys with a van parked in the street, blocking the street completely. On the van there's a title of some kind that I can't read. After the usual "oh, you're *not* Dutch, you had *me* fooled", I'm wondering what they want. "We are the...uhm...what is it called...the environmental police". Aha...(?) "We found this envelope with your address in the garbage.." He shows me the envelope. "We found the garbage outside your house." He didn't actually make it clear what the problem was, but I could see where this was going. "Well, it's not mine, there are 5 people living in this house." They obviously wanted the culprit. "Are they home now?" Yeah, pal, it's 11am on a Wednesday, of course we're all home, noone has anywhere to go. So I go to check who's home, only Cassandra is. Cassandra and I come back to the door and continue the chat, concluding that it wasn't any of us and noone else is home at the moment.

Well that's that. Or is it now. A couple of weeks later, Jake gets a letter from the local authorities. It's in Dutch, we can't make it out. The garbage cops are fining him €50 for putting out the garbage on the wrong day. Why Jake? Because they have him on record as the tenant living here the longest. Riiight. Well, we didn't know that was what it said, Jake went down to their office to find out. He also found out he can fight the fine and he has 30 days to file a complaint. Not only that, they told him they *scan* all "evidence" like this so they have proof of these "crimes". Who said unemployment was a problem? Not when you can hire people to scan garbage. A letter of complaint? Will do. We don't know anything about the form that it's supposed to be in, not even where exactly it should be sent, so Jake calls the garbage cops and they tell him the garbage "detective" is out. "Well is there someone else I can talk to?" "No." "And you don't know anything about this?" "No." "So what can I do?" "Call back tomorrow, please." What they did tell him was that usually in these cases, the garbage cops knock on your door because someone tipped them off. Let's see, Melissa took out the trash at 8.30, at 11 they were already at our door. Yeah, that sounds about right. In fact, aside from a tip off, there is no way they could possibly know that the trash was taken out on Wednesday morning, not Tuesday night. So one of our neighbors ratted us out. How Orwellian. [Feel a laugh coming on yet?]

Of course, it would not have happened in the first place had the garbage service not put out the wrong dumpster. But as always in this country, you *will* be charged for every small infraction, whereas noone generally feels responsible for anything they may have done wrong.

Ps. The original names in this story were replaced with soap opera names so that tv addicts will feel right at home.

59 days. Almost two months. What am I talking about? Oh, I didn't say? It took almost two months before I would have something to say about Dutch politics. See, I just caught the appearance of one Geert Wilders on BBC Hardtalk as I was surfing the channels and it took me about 2 minutes to realize that the guy is an asshat. Yes, I know what you're saying, "you don't even speak Dutch and now you're going to bash this politician you know nothing about because you happened to hear him speak English". Yes, you're damn right. In this society of public correctness, it's amazing sometimes to hear people say things that are so blunt that you think they have no awareness of public opinion.

Let me reiterate some of his stand points for your pleasure.

• if you wear a burka, you will not get a job, you will not make Dutch friends and ultimately you will fail to integrate into society
• in these times of insecurity, noone should wear clothing which covers their face, everyone should be able to identify everyone else in the street
• if you have dual nationality, of which one is Dutch, and you repeatedly commit a crime, you should be stripped of your Dutch nationality
• it is unacceptable that the major Dutch cities are becoming dominated by citizens of the faith of Islam, this country should be dominantly white/Christian/Jewish
• if Turkey, a moderate, democratic Islamic state joins the EU, the Netherlands should leave the EU

"To every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Newton's first law. Or third. I never remember which is which. In any case, the clever Englishman was onto something. Most recently illustrated by the following example.

When I met my new landlord a couple weeks back, he was helping this Japanese couple move into one of his apartments. I met him there as well, he said he would show me some places after he was done with them. The guy was also showing some places to this Malaysian girl, who remarked to me how effin cold that morning was. As we're waiting for the Japanese to get sorted out (and indeed they are efficient people), the last formality is signing the contract. He gives them the paper to read, and explains things that aren't quite clear. It was fairly routine, except one thing which made both me and the Japanese exchange puzzled looks. "Tenant will not use pot in the house."

Erik has a new roommate. Well technically, housemate, apartmentmate, flatmate, whatever. Just that any of those words sound so corny to me and so I prefer 'roommate' even though it's a bit misleading (or at least ambiguous). Erik complains of a smell of marijuana in his room. It's the roommate smoking pot in the other room, and the smoke (as gas generally does expertly well) spreads in every direction where there's less air pressure. In fact, when my roommate smokes in his room (only it's cigarettes, not pot), I can sometimes smell smoke in my room. Worse yet, when the asswipe neighbor downstairs goes outside to smoke and I have my window open, I get smoke in my room.

No wonder then, that my contract says "If you smoke pot in the house, you will get booted out and your shit will be tossed in the nearest canal." Well, it doesn't actually say that, I have the same one the Japanese got. But it sounds reasonable, doesn't it?